10 years later: Supreme Court Justice marches to own tune

ANNE GEARANAssociated Press Writer

Published Tuesday, September 04, 2001

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Most workdays, Clarence Thomas beats his eight Supreme Court colleagues to the office. He drives his black Corvette through the suburban Virginia dawn and scoots into the court's guarded garage by 6 a.m.

After a decade on the nation's high court, Thomas has settled into a comfortable routine that balances the court's heavy workload of reading and writing with a busy life of travel, lecturing and raising a young grandnephew.

He has also found a comfortable home on the court's far right. He remains in the shadow of ideological bunkmate Antonin Scalia but is willing to write separate manifestos that stake a more absolutist position on cases involving religion, free speech and other issues.

The court term that begins this fall offers Thomas, the second black to serve on the court, another chance to rule against affirmative action. He steadfastly opposes it as an insult to the values of hard work and self-reliance.

''Justice Thomas enjoys marching to his own drummer,'' said Clint Bolick, vice president of the libertarian law firm Institute for Justice. Bolick has known Thomas since they worked together in the 1980s.

Comfort has not come cheaply for the man whose searingly public job interview in the fall of 1991 featured naughty words, allegations of lewd office come-ons and Thomas' famous, furious charge that he was the victim of a ''high-tech lynching.''

An array of liberal and civl rights groups had opposed Thomas from the start and described him as a potentially dangerous, far-right extremist. But 10 years later is it probably the surprise allegations of Thomas' young accuser, Anita Hill, that linger in most Americans' minds.

Thomas denied Hill's allegations, President Bush stuck by him, and Thomas was confirmed by a 52-48 vote. He took his seat in October 1991.

''He has been every bit as conservative and more as his critics thought he would be,'' said Earl Maltz, a constitutional law professor and Supreme Court specialist at Rutgers University's law school. ''I think he has also been more of an intellectual force to be reckoned with than people thought he would be.''

Thomas is still haunted and aggrieved by the fight over his nomination, associates say, and the whispers of tokenism and intellectual inadequacy that persisted when he took the bench.

He rarely speaks in court, is gun-shy with the press and has cut off at least one former friend who spoke too candidly about him. He declined a request for an interview for this story.

Yet he is also willing to speak more freely outside the court than most of his colleagues, and is the only current justice known to cry during a speech; in May, he broke down while talking about how he came to have custody of his grandnephew.

Around the court Thomas is known as a friendly, even jovial fellow with a booming laugh that startles timid new law clerks.

Although thicker and grayer than he was during the hearings, Thomas at 53 is still the youngest of the nine justices. He is also the only one with a school-age child at home, an experience that associates say delights him.

Part of the reason for his early hours is that Thomas tries to be home to help his grandnephew, Mark, with homework after school. Like Thomas, Mark was born to less than promising circumstances in Georgia. Thomas sought custody of the boy four years ago, when the boy was 6, much as his own, strict grandfather took in the young Thomas at about the same age.

As one of the few high-ranking black people in government, Thomas remains a polarizing figure and persona non grata for many civil rights groups.

Thomas has been a mentor and tutor for black students, but has hired just one as a law clerk. Supreme Court clerks are the cream of the cream of the crop at the nation's top law schools, Thomas has said, and any black students in that select group are welcome to apply.

Thomas seems to accept the lot of a junior justice without complaint. He leaves the courtroom showboating to Scalia and tells audiences he does not mind writing so many opinions in dull bankruptcy and insurance cases.

As he was in the Bush v. Gore decision that ended presidential ballot counting in Florida last year, Thomas is typically among the five-member moderate-to-conservative bloc that usually prevails in disputed cases.

Even when he agrees with the majority, Thomas is the justice most likely to file a separate, solo opinion.

The traditional goal of the court is unanimity or at least a minimum number of overlapping opinions, but Thomas is content to state his individual views even when he cannot persuade anyone else to join him.

He is also a prolific dissenter. Only Justice John Paul Stevens, the liberal justice with whom Thomas least agrees, has dissented more often since Thomas joined the court.

''His influence is growing and will grow increasingly over time,'' Bolick said. ''Thomas is more willing than any other justice to return to the original text of the Constitution and to urge the court to correct past mistakes.''